This month’s party will feature Andrea Shubert, presenting, “How to Make a Card Game in 10 Easy Steps”!

Have you ever played a strategy or trading card game and thought about making one yourself? Andrea Jennifer Shubert will walk you through the process of digitally and physically prototyping a game, from layouts and templates to wording and card art. Then comes the printing, cutting, sleeving, and collating physical cards, and eventually putting together sets for digital playtesting.

In the presentation, Andrea will describe the four stages of her prototyping process, and how to avoid common mistakes in them:

Design – What game are we making? What lessons can we learn from prior card games?

Pre-production – What art resources are there? Which apps can we use to quickly make cards?

Production – What are we printing our cards out on — stickers? Card stock? Paper? How do we make decks for playtest?

Playtest – In what format do we present the cards? Boosters or decks (for a TCG)? Playmat? Rules? Self-guided or managed?

This presentation is good for anyone who ever wanted to make a card game, and ideal for those trying to bring a card game to market.

Andrea Jennifer Shubert has been a game designer, producer or developer for the past twenty years. Her first commercial hit, Acrophobia, helped to launch the social gaming genre in 1997. She has been a part of the digital trading card game genre since its inception, first as a high-level player of Chron X, and later as a designer or producer of over a dozen games. Totaling more than 11,000 cards, she is glad that they are digital. Currently Andrea is a Product Lead at Connected Sports Ventures, and can be found on twitter @andrea2s1 or on the web at andreashubert.com.

[Andrea gave a version of this talk at No Show Conference in July and I would personally recommend it for game designers at every level, not just people interested in designing trading card games. — Courtney]